The Rolling Stones – MiddleRabbiting

Les Années Psychédélique – Part 2: La Responsable – Jacques Dutronc. Or, Vive Le Morrissey’s French Spiritual Forefather. The Bastard.

First things first: I am enormously, feather-spittingly, cripplingly jealous of Jacques Dutronc. Second, my suspicion is that, despite Morrissey’s stated admiration for the work of Hattie Jacques, it’s this Jacques who he really had something in common with, at least in terms of this – absolutely cracking single. To draw a rough analogy in terms…

Reasons To Be Cheerless Parts 1, 2 & 3. Or, It’s The Hope That Kills You: Why Britpop Dated So Badly.

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”—Mark Twain. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Johnny Rotten, announcing the break up of The Sex Pistols. My name’s Middlerabbit, I’m 48 and I’m a pessimist. Not because Mark Twain told me…

Nacht Yacht Rock #5 $1000 Wedding – Gram Parsons

I’ve already mentioned that I started writing these posts about songs that turned out to not constitute Yacht Rock before I realised what Yacht Rock was and that I didn’t like Yacht Rock – well, hardly any. I thought Yacht Rock just meant MOR Country & Western records. Where I got that idea, I don’t…

Finger Pointing Songs: part 3. The Rolling Stones. Or, Wife Beating Man.

The shadow that Bob Dylan cast over the sixties wasn’t only long and broad, it was dark and cold. Once he’d broken through, any number of scruffy young ‘poets’ came out of the woodwork and started telling it like it was. Social justice songs were back on the agenda but that was before his performance…

Finger Pointing Songs: part 1. Like A Rolling Stone. Or, Bob Villain?

The idea that there are only about – depending on who you believe – three, five, seven or however many basic story plots that have ever existed is always being bandied about. Reductionism isn’t difficult – I don’t know why they don’t go further and say that there’s only one: somebody does something. The same…

I’m Sticking With Lou. Or, Velvet Common Ground.

The Velvet Underground can’t have invented everything. Even though sometimes it seems a bit like they did. They can’t have because they only started putting records out in 1967 and, by that time, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released and The Beatles had already invented everything. Well, not everything maybe,…